Brotherhood
by tempus terere
Summary: The story of the GDR's downfall told in five acts, beginning with the year 1972.


**Notes:** Sorry for trespassing into foreign territory here, but I simply could not resist this bunny of plot. Besides, I'm a sucker for my home country's (recent) history. It's the perfect basis for Hetalia-Angst. You have been warned.

**brotherhood**

**01.** Gilbert had never had a close relationship with his brother. Drinking an occasional beer had been everything that'd happened between them, and he had preferred it this way.

He should have known that, with a country like Germany, things would never really stop shifting.

"Bruder," Ludwig said to him, "I acknowledge your borders, but we shall remain one nation."

It was 1972. Twenty-three years had passed since he had become East and his brother West. And he was still not giving up on him.

Gilbert snorted. "Just what would you do without the awesome me?"

Ludwig gave a weak smile as the other beheaded a bottle of schnapps, cackling wildly.

**02.** "Bruder, what is the meaning of this?"

Without knocking or any other of his usual unnecessary means of courtesy, Ludwig stumbled into Gilbert's house two years later. At precisely two o'clock in the morning. He looked like he had run the entire way down the street from his home. In his right hand he held a sheet of paper.

"Nngh?" Gilbert enquired.

"Your new constitution says you're not part of the German nation anymore!" Ludwig shouted and waggled the paper to stress his point.

Gilbert stretched out one arm blindly and fumbled for the bottle of beer on his nightstand, before sitting up and taking a strong sip out of it. "Well," he said, "I'm awesome. I don't need you or those other western suckers."

Ludwig's gaze lingered on him for a moment, then he left.

It was a brisk, clean cut. It didn't hurt. It didn't hurt in the slightest. After all, Gilbert had never been close to his brother. And his chest totally hadn't stung when he'd seen the constitution for the first time.

He swallowed down the rest of his beer in one gulp.

**03.** Gilbert was only mildly surprised when Ludwig returned in the late 80s.

"East," he began, and it sounded more than off on his lips. "East, your economy is crumbling down. You're indebted with almost 30 million DM." They both knew there was something else he wanted to say but simply couldn't, and so it remained, hovering in between them, unspoken.

"I can easily solve that. Gimme a day or two."

Ludwig hesitated. "_East_," he said, and it almost appeared as though the word was harming him physically, "think about your people. They're on the streets, risking their lives. They want their rights back. They want to see their families again." He put special emphasis on the word "families" as if it should mean something.

Lunging forward, Gilbert threw himself onto his brother and was about to punch him in the nose, but halted when he saw his eyes. They were blue and they were wet. They were wet. As in, tears; as in, he was crying.

Suddenly, everything seemed like a step in the wrong direction. Now he felt like punching him all the more.

**04.** The year 1989 was the year it all ended. And rather unceremoniously, too.

On November 9th their borders were opened due to a slip-up of his own government. It was one of the most embarrassing days in Gilbert's whole life.

With a sour expression he stood on the Berlin wall and watched his (ex-)population stream out of his (ex-)territory. In the distance of about 50 metres Ludwig was doing the same. The only exception was that he looked happier than he had in decades. (He probably couldn't wait coming over to him and pulling him into a big and awkward, brotherly hug. Gilbert cringed at the sheer imagination.)

The air up on the wall was sharp and crisp. His lungs were burning with every new breath he drew. He could hear the people cheering, "We are one nation!" Could see them bawling with joy. Those assholes, those traitors.

It was their fault he wasn't a country anymore. It was their fault that he wasn't able to breathe anymore, that his vision was getting blurred, that he was without purpose now.

Well. If they didn't appreciate him, then nobody could blame him for leaving them, right?

He was way too awesome for them, anyway, that dumb West especially. After all, Gilbert had never had a really close relationship with his brother.

**05. **Within the blink of an eye, the country once known as the GDR, once known as Prussia disappeared from the maps as though it had never existed.

**FIN.**

**Historical notes:  
01: **In 1972 Willy Brandt became the new Bundeskanzler of the FRG. He decided, unlike his predecessors, to recognise the GDR as an independent state. He was trying to improve the relationship between both countries with this policy (also called "Wandel durch Annäherung" = "Change through Approach").  
**02:** The government of the GDR, however, wanted further distinction and seperation. So, in 1974, they changed their constitution, stating that the GDR was a "socialist state of workers, farmers and the political organization of the workers in the cities and in the countryside under the leadership of the working class and their Marxist-Leninist party." Before, it had said that it was part of the German nation.  
**03:** The controlled economy pretty much destroyed the GDR. Its only developed economic sector was the heavy industry, everything else was behind the times. Also, the country was highly indebted.  
**04:** On November 9th 1989 the frontiers of the GDR opened. This could only happen because of the press spokesman of the GDR's government, Günter Schabowski, who made a wonderful mistake as he declared the borders to be opened "right away", although that had actually been scheduled for the 10th. The media spread this in both the GDR and FRG, so, around half past nine in the evening, the first citizens of the GDR passed the borders at the Bolholmer Straße in Berlin. The police officers simply did not know what to do with 20,000 protestants waiting to cross the frontiers and therefore had no other choice but letting them go.


End file.
